The truth always comes out. If it takes half a year or half a century, the truth always comes out.

So 68-year-old Richard Eggers really should have known that the sordid details of his dark, criminal past would eventually creep into the present and jeopardize his career. In 1963, the Iowa resident gave new meaning to the term “money laundering” when he tried to insert a cardboard cutout of a dime into a laundromat machine. Local law enforcement caught wind of the stunt and arrested him for fraud.

Eggers, who was a teenager at the time of his arrest, turned his life around and until recently worked as a customer service representative at Wells Fargo bank. But under new federal employment regulations, Wells Fargo fired Eggers upon learning of his criminal record, ABC affiliate WOI-TV reports. The regulations were instated to weed out workers with histories of fraud and identity theft to better protect the company’s customers.

“We don’t have discretion to grant exceptions in situations like this. Once we find out someone has a criminal history of dishonesty or breach of trust we can no longer employ them.”

Eggers said he plans to apply for a waiver to be exempt from the law and reverse the company’s decision — but that process could take months. In the meantime, he’s seeking the assistance of a lawyer and hunting for a new job.

In the end, they will lose a lot more than the pension money they tried to bilk.

Well, at least they had a reason.

I watched the corporate plantation lay off (same result) people starting with the highest paid or nearest to retirement. We broke no rules, but the result is the same. They find something no matter what.

They really think the geeks they laid off are pining to return to that?

Even without my disability, where's my motivation?

I can't do the job I did, but I'll not trust them with my livelihood ever again when I recover.

I don't need a position called 'genius' defiling the meaning of the word.

And titles like "Jedi" is just laughable.

Geneology research puts my family around the Anderson plantation where a slave told his former master to shove it, when he called for him to return.

yeh, fired an old man that did not get a chance to do anything wrong. will not fire bammy , holder, biden for being involved in the killling of a border patrol and another killing connected to the oklahoma city bombing . we have some wonderful bosses now days. the thrid world country is upon us.

This has to be a prank right; story from the Onion? Recent "rules" applied by the VA regarding SDVOSB has removed 18,000 from CVE business roles, down to about 5,000 veteran owned small businesses at this point. And Romney would be worse. I have to find a way to get to Canada; this place is hypocritical toast.

Same thing happened to my husband. He was employed by Wells for a few years before his background check revealed he had an 18 year old returned check charge. He received a summons, paid it off, never went to court and then forgot about it. But in paying it off, it was an admission of guilt and therefore shows up on his record. He was fired from Wells but he did get an FDIC waiver and is still employed by Wells. You do not have to be arrested, but any admission of guilt, including paying off a fine/court cost is subject to the banking rules. The rules are there for our protection and the FDIC waiver is in place to override the minor infractions. It took my husband 3 months to get the waiver by the way. I agree that it seems to be a very strict set of rules, especially for such minor charges and there definitely should be exceptions for employees who do not handle money or have access to banking/financial records. My husband works in the mortgage division.

laundering” when he tried to insert a cardboard cutout of a dime into a

laundromat machine. Local law enforcement caught wind of the stunt and

arrested him for fraud."It's sad that I don't remember what I thought about those games where they taught you about Money like counting and giving change and all that......Am glad I never played !Imagine you playing a game of Monopoly and going directly to jail for using "Counterfeiting Money" and 20 yrs later paying the piper !

I am disappointed in wells Fargo. The guy was a minor at the time and that was over a half a century ago... The guy was probably just playing around with the laundry machine to see what it would do out of curiosity and some angry merchant or supercop took the deal too far... That's what Teenagers do, stupid things. Some lawyer could probably get that thing ex sponged off from his record.

Forget the dime and give the guys job back.. Go after the real crooks.

This supposed blind fealty to the regulations is really Wells Fargo's attempt to stir anger against ALL bank regulation. "Let that poor guy have his job back", we'll say. "Yes, and let's drop all the other regulations that stop us from becoming even bigger and less accountable," they'll wish.

They enforce the rules on little people and ignore it in the case of the real fraudsters.

Also, as a bank they are terrible, make you jump through a crazy number of hoops and treat all of their customers as likely fraudsters. Wells bought Wachovia and acquired me as a customer. I am too lazy to have moved all my money yet, but I think about it every time I have to do anything involving the bank

Funny how the banking system work. If you defraud taxpayers out of BILLIONS, then they promote you and give you MILLION dollar bonuses. But if you steal a measly dime, they fire you. I guess because it doesn't show enough ambition.

Here is where he messed up. He didn't incorporate first. If he had then he wouldn't have had to plead guilty. Just pay a trivial fine. Then he wouldn't have had a criminal record and so wouldn't be in trouble.

Same thing happened to my husband. He was employed by Wells for a few years before his background check revealed he had an 18 year old returned check charge. He received a summons, paid it off and never went to court but in doing so it was an admission of guilt and therefore shows up on his record. He was fired from Wells but he did get an FDIC waiver and is still employed by Wells. So no...you do not have to be arrested, but any admission of guilt including paying off a fine/court cost is subject to the banking rules.

They DID SO TOO have the discretion to ignore it. They could've JUST IGNORED it. Just WHO EXACTLY was going to FORCE them to comply?!?? It would've been far far better for Wells Fargo if the enforcer/bully/idiot had been THAT BUREAUCRAT INSTEAD OF Wells Fargo.

This is typical of the stupidity of our generation. We look for laws to deal with serious situations and then enforce them in the most trivial situations. I was caught swiping a packet of sugar from a snack bar in a bowling alley in 1965 at the age of nine. Is this a secret that I must guard with my life for fear of losing my job almost 50 years later?

Wells Fargo and their spokesperson, Angela Kaipust, are wrong; dead wrong. According to the FDIC, a Section 19 application is not required for "de minimis" offenses which include offenses punishable by imprisonment for a term of one year or less and/or a fine of $1,000 or less.

Actually if on an employment application - any employment application, credit application or any other application from 1965 to the present - if you in fact were convicted and they asked EVER - and you answered NO to the question - they could take retroactive action virtually forever. Pretty sad isn't it?

The issue IS NOT what they COULD do! They are whining that they COULD NOT forgive/overlook because NEW LAWS AND REGULATIONS REQUIRED them to do this! That is simply not the case. And they don't have to take MY word for it -- they could just ASK THE REGULATOR.

Wells Fargo got caught in an employment lie. Now they will obfuscate, attempt to cover up and then wait - and pay the man off - he'll never have a day in court and the whole thing will blow over - and next time - they'll find someone more vulnerable before they show them the door they'll trap them. Oops they were caught - surprised?

Unfortunately, this law is NOT applied uniformly. An employee of Wells Fargo who was married to my brother's step-daughter gained access to my elderly mother's account, which was quite substantial and "borrowed" $5,000 from it without her knowledge. It was his intent to "borrow" the money, then put it back later, and my mother would never have know about it. She is 88 and subscribes to a service that monitors her transactions and notified her of this "loan". She called the person who "borrowed" the money, and he admitted it, and begged her not to tell Wells Fargo, but it was too great an amount to ignore, and was despicable, to boot. She went through "the channels" at Wells Fargo, and the person was disciplined, his ability to to the same thing again was taken away, but HE WAS NOT FIRED OR REPORTED TO THE POLICE. Wells Fargo somehow made an exception for this guy, even though 1) His act was willfully illegal, 2) He was an adult at the time, not a kid 3) The amount was 500,000 times as large as the person who lost his job. My Mom, not wanting to cause a hardship within the family did not press the issue, since it was caught before she lost anything. The only good thing that came out of it is that my niece-in-law divorced him and "took him to the cleaners" in the divorce.

But when Wells Fargo says, “We don’t have discretion to grant exceptions in situations like this. Once we find out someone has a criminal history of dishonesty or breach of trust we can no longer employ them,” it just is not true.

My husband was one of them. He was fired for an 18 yr old check. He Paid it off immediately, never went to court, nor spent a day in jail. He forgot about it but it showed up on his background check years after he was hired. My husband did get an FDIC Waiver and is still employed by Wells.

“We don’t have discretion to grant exceptions in situations like this. Once we find out someone has a criminal history of dishonesty or breach of trust we can no longer employ them.”Wells Fargo built a business model based on fraud and profited millions and millions dollars by defrauding its customers. Shouldn't Wells Fargo's top executives be laid off for dishonesty and breaching the trust? Truth is coming out. Wells Fargo has systematically demonstrated dishonesty and breach of the trust against its customers. Why no Wells Fargo top executives have been laid off yet according to regulations. or the regulations simply don't apply to Wells Fargo top executives?Material facts: $243,000 underwater as soon as we signed Wells Fargo's loan contract before the ink dried. Attorney General suspended Wells Fargo hand-picked appraiser’s license for committing appraisal fraud on our home. Wells Fargo admitted that the mortgage loan shouldn’t be originated in the first place and promised to buy back its fraudulent loan in 2006. In 2010, despite our repeated plea and total cash payments of $350,000, Wells Fargo still chose to wrongfully foreclose our home. I confronted Wells Fargo CEO in person last year, asked him not to steal our home. He had policemen arrested me instead. www.wellsfargomortgagefraud.co...